To coincide with the 96th birth anniversary of Padma Vibhushan S H Raza, Art Musings in association with the Raza Foundation is showcasing his paintings, as part of the ongoing Raza Utsav. Kshitij which opens on 22 February 2018, will showcase works from 2011 – 2015, in a week-long exhibition.
In the course of a career spanning nearly eight decades, Raza dedicated himself to a quest for vital forms that conveyed his earliest memories of landscape and cosmic expanse, language and silence. To Raza, the painting was akin to the meditative practice of Japa, the fully-engaged repetition of a mantra, deepened and concentrated into a pathway of energy.
At its deepest level, Raza’s art is distinguished by a profoundly hymn-like quality: it is charged by the constancy of prayer. It is a form of enunciation that reaches into the heart of that vast silence in which all sound is absorbed and from which all sound emanates. This is the true meaning of the dark plenum-void, the Bindu, which resides at the core of Raza’s art. The ‘Bindu’ has become more of an icon, sacred in its symbolism, and placing his work in an Indian context.
Art Musings Booth # B19features work by Sakti Burman, Satish Gujral, Anjolie Ela Menon, Prabhakar Kolte, Baiju Parthan, Maïté Delteil, Smriti Dixit, Raghava K K, Maya Burman, Nilofer Suleman and Shilo Shiv Suleman.
The paintings by Sakti Burman, He is Dreaming & Nativity, include themes that the artist has visited throughout his artistic journey. Various Indian and European pasts flow into the confluence of his paintings, drawing from Hindu mythology and Biblical narratives, from the puppet theatre, the Mughal miniature ateliers, from Kalighat. Alongside West European art history and Bengali popular culture, he draws on a reservoir of family folklore. Satish Gujral’s paintings have a fluid energy. This sense of movement gives the works a sinuous and undulating form. The use of patina and color in the works create a subtle and aesthetic synergy. Anjolie Ela Menon weaves legendary narratives in her works as she combines myth with reality. Her paintings capture the nuances and magic of motherhood in the series Divine Mothers. She draws from mythology in these 2 works depicting Yashoda and Krishna, Parvati and Ganesh. Through the mastery of her technique, she creates images that come alive but continue to exist in an existential time-warp. Prabhakar Kolte’s Untitled paintings often slam an overpowering block of colour against the eye, with an aperture carved into it, so that we may look past at stains and drips, laddered motifs and floating veils. As though in a kaleidoscopic dance, his forms involve themselves in a never-ending process of dissolution and resolution, parting and coalescing, agitation and repose. TERMINUS, by Baiju Parthan belongs to a series of new-media artworks that re-imagines and alters historic monuments by staging virtual events using elements modeled in 3D graphics and photography. Presented through the medium of animated lenticular print technology, the artwork emerges as an interactive experience. Maïté Delteil’s works have a languid quality and have an old world charm. My Paradise for You is divided into two bands where the flat red of the sky contrasts a green ground. The painting’s foreground is populated by birds, and trees constructed of bark are topped with balls of flowers in the artist’s trademark style. She brings together nature and artifice, creating a sense of balance and restraint which marks her paintings. Using a palette of fabrics, found objects and plastics, Smriti Dixit embraces the processes of experimentation and creation to communicate the concepts of rebirth, recycling and renewal. In the series, Doing, Undoing, Redoing, Smriti revisits her old works in her studio, and using activities as varied as stitching, quilting and adhering, she transforms these old works, almost like she transforms herself, time and time again. In Raghava K K’s latest series of artworks, Sublime Machines, he imagines scientific reality as a source of the sublime, reinvesting the sphere of science with emotion and human intent. Here Raghava has created a new compositional process, part human and part algorithm driven, to endow material reality to formerly purely digital modes of creation. Maya Burman’s paintings are a meeting ground of two cultures – Indian as well as French. The details of Indian miniature painting and European Middle Age architecture merge in her art, and literature and poetry are also very much present. Cascade of Flowers, a series of circular works, have a tapestry like effect where everything is subordinate to patterning, reminiscent of the French art nouveau tradition. Nilofer Suleman’s work is a coalition of styles that re-invoke Indian graphic culture in meticulous miniature-style canvases with characters that have lives of their own- speaking through their elongated almond eyes. Noorjahan Carpetwali invokes an older world. Ancient trade routes that spill carpets from Persia, migratory birds that make home in bazaars- calling upon a space where love, nature and culture coexist. Shilo Shiv Suleman’s art combines magical realism, technology and social justice. Solstice is a reflection on paths of light and shadow across the cosmos and our bodies. Resembling an ancient celestial device used to mark distances between planets, the central piece is painted on layers of wood and reflective mirror and speaks to the illumination of all things. With a series of embroideries Shilo creates her own astronomical instruments to watch stars with.
Smriti Dixit | Doing, Undoing, Redoing – 1 | Mixed Media 40” x 40” | 2017
Smriti Dixit | Doing, Undoing, Redoing – 2 | Mixed Media
Art Musings will showcase the works of the legendary artist K G Subramanyan in an exhibition that opens at the gallery on 31 January 2018. The exhibition features over 30 works – including drawings, gouaches and reverse paintings on acrylic sheets – representing over five decades of his artistic production, from 1963 to 2014.
In the catalogue essay accompanying this exhibition, the poet and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote writes, “KG Subramanyan (1924-2016) was a seminal artist and pedagogue who left his formative imprint on postcolonial Indian art. His works transit seamlessly between object and illusion, people and their distorted mirror images, private occasions and public spaces. Vignettes from the boudoir are intercut with scenes from the marketplace. The lady at her toilette is never far away from the hawker peddling her wares. What we know of Subrahmanyan as a suave critic, a legendary teacher, and a man of sardonic, sometimes cutting humour, can sometimes divert us from the substance of his art – which delves playfully into the secret lives that we conceal behind the public masks we present to the world.”
As part of the Mumbai Gallery Weekend, Art Musings will host a walk-through on Saturday, 3 February 2018, between the distinguished artist Sudhir Patwardhan and Ranjit Hoskote on the art and legacy of KG Subramanyan, his impact on several generations of Indian artists and his continuing relevance as a major thinker.
In the Presence of Another Sky traces the nearly seven-decade-long arc of Sakti Burman’s career, situating the artist in various contexts, including Indian modernism, the School of Paris, the sumptuous background of the Renaissance and the Baroque, the enchantments of commedia dell’arte,the turbulence of a Europe wrestling with questions of migration and an India vexed by rival claims on identity.Ranjit Hoskote, poet, cultural theorist and curator, adapts the literary and cinematic techniques of montage to tell this story, not in chronological order, but by reference to Burman’s lifeworld, distributed across France and India, and his varied emotional and intellectual investments, whether in the art of Ajanta and Pompeii, his childhood memories of festivity, or the talismanic power of the Kalighat gouaches and Dokhra objects he collects. This book maps, without simply replicating, the mise-en-scene of the eponymous retrospective of Burman’s work, held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, in 2017.
National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai & Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India, supported by Art Musings presents ‘In the Presence of Another Sky: Sakti Burman, A Retrospective’, a survey of the distinguished artist Sakti Burman’s work across nearly six decades. This retrospective is curated by poet and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote. It situates Sakti Burman’s practice in its historical contexts – as much within an evolving Indian modern as within the European lineage of the modern.Hoskote’s curatorial reading emphasises Burman’s affinities with a spectrum of artistic reference points, ranging from Pompeii murals to Dubuffet to illuminated manuscripts and miniatures. The exhibition will map Burman’s practice across the diverse artistic engagements that have characterised his journey: this includes his memorable contributions to engraving, the art of the book, drawing, sculpture, and painting in various media. ‘In the Presence of Another Sky’ will also celebrate the role of travel, of encounters with varied cultures, in the shaping of Burman’s art and world-view.
Director NGMA, Mr Shivaprasad Khened speaks of the upcoming retrospective: “On the 70th anniversary of India’s independence, it is a privilege and honour for the NGMA Mumbai to be hosting an exhibition of an artist who was witness to India’s Independence. This exhibition – In the Presence of Another Sky: Sakti Burman, A Retrospective – is a tribute to all those who were witness to India’s historic Independence and to the most unfortunate trauma that followed during the partition of the country into two nations, when millions of migrants crossed across the divided nations of India and East Pakistan.”
Several outreach programs are planned during the duration of the exhibition including walks with the curator, a poetry reading, panel discussion and a book release.
Art Musings opens their next exhibition BLACK/white on 14 June 2017 with a group show featuring leading artists KG Subramanyan, Jogen Chowdhury, Ram Kumar, T Vaikuntam, Ganesh Haloi, B Vithal, Paresh Maity, Raghava K K, Maya Burman, Gopikrishna, Neeraj Goswami, Suhas Roy, Nandan Purkayastha & Ajay Dhandre. The exploration of black and white has been a constant for artists. They revisit this theme for BLACK/white, creating austere dramatic works using the minimal monochromatic palette. Paresh Maity and Ganesh Haloi landscape drawings are lyrical hymns to nature. Raghava K K exhibits drawings from his series ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and Ajay Dhandre presents a suite of meticulously detailed paintings that have an aura of science fiction. Vaikuntam’s Telengana women and Suhas Roy’s Bengali women are depicted in charcoal. Maya Burman’s drawings have a tapestry like effect, reminiscent of the French art nouveau tradition and Nandan Purkayastha’s finely depicted birds have a splash of colour. Gopikrishna’s surrealistic drawings look like pages from a fairy tale. Neeraj Goswami and B Vithal’s bold strong drawings in charcoal explore the human body. The exhibition also features works by senior masters including limited edition etchings by KG Subramanyan, charcoal works by Jogen Chowdhary and a suite of 4 recent drawings by Ram Kumar.
Art Musings opens their next exhibition The Creator Series, on 20 April 2017 featuring works by contemporary artist Ajay Dhandre.
Dhandre’s concept is the revolution of a future language that is being generated by technological progress. The aura of science fiction surrounds his meticulously detailed paintings. His frames are populated by mechanical-organic composite forms: cyborgs, robots, prosthetic devices that extend the reach of body as well as consciousness, and interstellar probes. In this series, Dhandre investigates the dawn of an era of revolutionary experiments. Humans become more machine-like and morph into cyborgs, the line between biology and technology starts to blur. The seamless merging of intelligent machines with organic life gives rise to a new hybrid reality, a new knowledge, indicating an evolutionary step into the future of human history.
I have attached the ecatalog to this mail. Please go through it and let me know if any of the artworks interest you. We can have them sent over for you to see them at your convenience or you can come by to the gallery.
Intelligent Organism – IN30
Watercolour on Paper
40" X 56”
Cyborg Interface Device
C26, Watercolour on Paper
84" X 60"
Cyber Kinetics Device
C66D, Watercolour on Paper
56" X 40"
C11, Watercolour on Paper
84" X 60"
8 New Born Universe
UB-06, Watercolour on Paper
27" x 15"
8 New Born Universe
UB-05, Watercolour on Paper
27" x 15"
8 New Born Universe
UB-04, Watercolour on Paper
27" x 15"
Art Musings is presenting Vision into Infinity, a solo exhibition of prominent Indian artist Paresh Maity. This is the artist’s 80th solo exhibition. The show brings together a compilation of Paresh Maity’s art from the early 90s to the present and represents the artist’s metamorphosis; a reflection of the refined visual aesthetics developed by the artist through decades of multi-layered practice. Tradition and modernity mingle within Paresh’s art. Recent sculptural works in bronze bring back essences of folkloric forms that surrounded him in his childhood and youth. Maity’s paintings evolve from primary encounters with the world around him and the personal responses they engender. It brings into his expression a vital emotional characteristic that touches a viewers’ sensibility. His visual narratives liberate the stories that are within him. The vastness of his visual experience is reflected in the large body of artworks in this exhibition including paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. His is a repertoire that envelopes the minimal as well as the lushly adorned, the miniature as well as the monumental.
The Flower and the Bulb: The Art of Maïté Delteil & Maya Burman features paintings by the Paris-based artists. For mother and daughter Maïté Delteil and Maya Burman, painting forms a lineage, a bloodline; and inspiration originates from the inner lives of the artists. The resultant compositions are bound to personal histories and images from the unconscious, making for paintings replete with layered realities. Living and working in France and India, both mother and daughter draw on the diverse aesthetics of these cultures. Both Maïté and Maya employ unusual and memorable palettes to bring their compositions together.
Maïté brush conveys into being the roundedness of cherries, the heavy pile of snow, the variegation of the plumage of hoopoes and finches, the particular serration and generic density of foliage. Delteil’s attentiveness to detail is a form of devotion: her paintings are songs of praise. Maya’s paintings, by contrast, are peopled, made up of characters that live in mythology and metaphor. Her figures float through fields, their bodies curving with the shapes of the landscape. Patterns weave and float around the central forms evoking a sense of exuberance and joie de vivre. Burman’s paintings have a tapestry like effect where everything is subordinate to floral, decorative patterning, reminiscent of the French art nouveau tradition.
